Fragonard is marking its centenary this summer with five exhibitions running across Grasse and Arles through October 18, tracing the perfume house's history from its founding by notary-turned-entrepreneur Eugène Fuchs in the years after the First World War.
Fuchs left his legal practice in Saint-Chamond for the sunlit hills around Grasse, where he acquired two established perfumeries, Cresp-Martinenq and Muraour, and built them into what became Fragonard. A century later, the company remains in family hands, run by his great-granddaughters Anne, Françoise and Agnès Costa.
"Fragonard with an F, as in family," said Agnès Costa, the company's president, gesturing to portraits of relatives hung throughout the anniversary exhibition. "Here you have the portrait of my mother and my father, painted in the 1960s. And the great-grandfather, who founded the house."
The centrepiece exhibitions, both running at the Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard until October 18, include "Fragonard, l'enfant chéri de Grasse," a survey of some thirty works by the painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, for whom the perfume house is named, and "Qui a peur des fleurs," which marks the bicentenary of photography with a century of floral imagery.
A fifth, temporary exhibition inside Fragonard's historic factory walks visitors through ten of the house's signature scents.